Super messy

EUROPE'S stockmarkets could not be fighting for their future more publicly. Contrast them with their American cousins, who are slugging it out in private negotiations at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the main stockmarket regulator. The battleground is an apparently modest proposal by Nasdaq, America's second-biggest stockmarket, for a new trading system known as “Super Montage”. Several electronic share-trading firms (known as ECNs), such as Instinet and Bloomberg Tradebook, think this is a disguised attempt to use government regulations to put them out of business. They note that Arthur Levitt, chairman of the SEC, and Frank Zarb, boss of Nasdaq, are old friends who used to work together.